Fiona Soe Paing, Glasgow review: 'evocative and eloquent'

Fiona Soe Paing, The Glad Café, Glasgow ★★★★

Scots-Burmese singer Fiona Soe Paing hails from the “ballad capital of the world” and her latest work, Sand, Silt, Flint, now available on CD, is so embedded in the pitch black ballad tradition of her native Northeast Scotland that it comes with QR codes to create a self-guided audio trail around the birthplaces of the songs she has rendered so sympathetically.

The album namechecks the likes of Huntly and Auchindoun while the backdrop to this solo show was a projection of a fascinating antique map of “Aberdonia”, densely marked with the farming communities and hamlets in which her repertoire was forged.

Paing is respectful of her material but no rigid traditionalist. She infuses her intoxicating interpretations with elemental field recordings of wind, rain, birdsong, vocal samples and an atmospheric mix of acoustic and electric instruments including cello, clarinet and clarsach (all on backing tape for this show) topped with her own evocative and eloquent alto voice.

She created a sense of occasion, processing to the stage in a pagan priestess costume (designed by April Pressley) with a headdress of twigs and shawl suggestive of fishing netting, ceremonially supping from her cup between songs.

Fiona Soe Paing | Isla Goldie

And what songs, from the plangent bassy cello lines and beseeching desolation of The Ballad of John Hosie to the mellow drone and haunting huskiness of Fisher’s Lullaby. Bonny Udny, shot through with a bare rhythmic guitar line, also featured the sampled voice of her distant relative, the ballad singer John Strachan, while there was a psychedelic twang to the guitar backing on Lass o’ the Lecht.

There was a noir punkiness, not unlike that of her peers Pumajaw, to her take on Tifty’s Annie (also known as Andrew Lammie), a grim account of an honour killing delivered with declamatory vocals, strident foot stamps, desperate solo trumpet and the inexorable march of martial drums.